After Apple, Now Ericsson sues Samsung Over Patent Infringement

Samsung seems to be plagued by patent infringement cases one after the other. Following Apple, Ericsson has now moved against the South Korean mobile giant alleging patent infringement charges.

Ericsson had filed the case against Samsung in a U.S. court in Texas on Tuesday. The Sweden-based company has accused Samsung of infringement on 24 of its patents including both hardware and software.

Ericsson aims at stopping the sale of many Samsung cameras, Blu-ray devices, TVs and phones including galaxy Note 2 and Galaxy S3.

As of now Ericsson remains the world’s biggest producer of telecom-networking equipment. Samsung is the largest producer of TVs and cell phones. If Ericsson gets its way, it could have significant impact on Samsung’s sales.

Ericsson had filed two complaints with the court. The complaints stated that Samsung had asked Ericsson to quote a lower price for renewing licenses to access Ericsson’s patents. According to Ericsson, Samsung also did not allow Ericsson access to its own patents as a tactic to impose pressure on the Swedish company to lower the prices.

By law, those companies holding industry-standard patents have to license their patents to their competitors at reasonable prices.

Samsung retaliated to Ericsson’s move by saying that Ericsson had unreasonable terms to put forward when Samsung tried to strike a fair deal. Ericsson had apparently demanded higher royalty rates than before, for the very same patent portfolio. The Korean company stated that it will move the court too, to protect itself from Ericsson’s claims.

Patent infringement suits have become very common in the tech world now. And Samsung for one is no stranger to it. In fact, it had only recently felt the sting of a lawsuit when it had to pay Apple over $1 billion as damages in a lawsuit over patents of mobile device.